Solar energy is increasingly being used to make life easier and more efficient, often on a small scale. A post on the New York Times’ India Ink blog provides a great example. The New Dehli-based non-profit TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute, has been working on a project to make solar lanterns available to India’s poor. India just suffered the largest blackout in human history, and its outdated grid is due for more disruptions in the years to come. Businesses are turning to diesel generators to keep themselves powered, but that’s far out of reach for the average Indian. The solution can be solar lanterns, which charge during the day and light up at night. TERI’s “Lighting a Billion Lives” project offers the lanterns for rent on a nightly basis, providing a lifeline that people can actually afford. From the Times: “You train one woman in the village,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, the institute’s director general. “She charges all the lanterns during the day, and she rents them out at night.”.
LANTERNS
Solar energy is increasingly being used to make life easier and more efficient, often on a small scale. A post on the New York Times’ India Ink blog provides a great example. The New Dehli-based non-profit TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute, has been working on a project to make solar lanterns available to India’s poor. India just suffered the largest blackout in human history, and its outdated grid is due for more disruptions in the years to come. Businesses are turning to diesel generators to keep themselves powered, but that’s far out of reach for the average Indian. The solution can be solar lanterns, which charge during the day and light up at night. TERI’s “Lighting a Billion Lives” project offers the lanterns for rent on a nightly basis, providing a lifeline that people can actually afford. From the Times: “You train one woman in the village,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, the institute’s director general. “She charges all the lanterns during the day, and she rents them out at night.”.
(adapted from
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/08/06/india_blackout_solar_lanterns_keep_the_light_on_for_india_s_poor.html)
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http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47621644/lanterns.htm